The Association for Behavior Analysis International® (ABAI) is a nonprofit membership organization with the mission to contribute to the well-being of society by developing, enhancing, and supporting the growth and vitality of the science of behavior analysis through research, education, and practice.

Description: Functional analysis is a powerful methodological tool that can provide an effective and humane treatment for problem behavior (Hanley, Iwata, & McCord, 2003). Despite its growing empirical support, a recent survey (Oliver, Pratt, & Normand, 2015) suggests that the majority of practicing behavior analysts are not conducting functional analyses to inform treatment considerations. Practitioners may be avoiding the functional analysis because of concerns that it places the patient or clinician in a dangerous environment and requires too much time or resources. We will be teaching the audience how to conduct an interview-informed synthesized contingency analysis that takes an average of 25 min (e.g., Jessel, Hanley, & Ghaemmaghami, 2016; Ghaemmaghami, Hanley, & Jessel, 2016), and presenting a collection of replications from clinical practice. We will then discuss how to use the results of the functional analysis to design effective, function-based treatments that include the teaching of complex and developmentally appropriate functional communication skills, and skill-based delay tolerance procedures that increase other social behaviors such as compliance, task engagement, and social interaction, in order to affect more global changes in the functional repertoires needed to be successful in contextually complex environments with natural reinforcement contingencies. Both socially mediated problem behavior and automatically maintained non-injurious stereotypy will be discussed.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the workshop, the participant will be able to: (1) design and conduct an interview-formed synthesized functional analysis of problem behavior in approximately 25 minutes, (2) teach complex functional communication skills, (3) teach toleration for delays and denials to reinforcement, (4) program for generalization and maintenance of these skills.

Activities: The workshop format will include lecture and discussion of material, small group activities, and guided activities from a workbook on designing functional analysis and function-based treatment.